Wooburn Narkovians 2nd XI endured a miserable afternoon at Chiswick & Latymer 3rd XI, going down by 8 wickets to a strong home side in the gloom at Chiswick House.
In cold, damp conditions, with occasional prolonged periods of light rain, Wooburn were put into bat and got off to a bad start against some testing Chiswick bowling. Veteran seamer, Trevor Woolley, quickly left the top order in tatters. John White, promoted to open the innings, was first to go, unluckily caught behind down the legside. Three balls later, Alan Cuthbert edged Woolley to second slip where Barnes took the catch in front of his nose, then Derek Milsom edged again to second slip where Barnes this time took a brilliant one handed catch low down. This left Wooburn 11-3 and in real trouble.
Angus Porter, having survived the early carnage, was now joined by Imran, and the pair batted with determination against Chiswick\s probing attack. Runs were hard to come by, but Porter took the opportunity to bat his way into form, while Imran looked to be positive, picking up the occasional boundary on the legside. At the halfway stage, they had taken the score to 57-3, then managed to accelerate against Chiswick’s change bowlers.
Imran reached an excellent 50, bringing up the Wooburn 100 before falling to a tired shot. His score of 59 helped add 103 for the fourth wicket and give Wooburn a chance in the match. Porter then reached his own half century, batting through the innings for an unbeaten 82. Stuart Savage helped add 52 for the fifth wicket, as Wooburn eventually reach 178-5 off their 52 overs. This was a worthy effort after they had been reduced to 11-3, and gave Wooburn’s bowlers something to defend.
The Chiswick reply hit early trouble when Rushworth fell lbw to a ball the barely got off the ground. The bounce had been somewhat variable all day, and John White was the beneficiary this time. Daldry, who had been a difficult opponent in the past, and Kesner then looked relatively untroubled in adding 56 for the second wicket before Kesner top edged to White at mid off, who comfortably held the catch.
Daldry and Suleman then took advantage of Wooburn’s threadbare attack. Daldry decided to force the pace, as the miserable weather threatened to worsen throughout the Chiswick innings. Wooburn introduced possibly their two youngest ever bowlers in the Thames Valley League, Ben (13) and Andrew (12) Barker. Both bowled well, but the home batsmen showed no mercy in their charge to victory, which they achieved with 16 overs to spare.
